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Film
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2046
Five years in the making, Hong Kong director Wong Kar-wai’s latest bit of non-linear storytelling is quintessentially challenging cinema.
Friday, August 5, 2005
By Kevin Biggers
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Sony Pictures Classics
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Ziyi Zhang as hooker Bai Ling
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There are two ‘unofficial sequel’ films this summer, made by directors who insist that viewing their respective first films is not a prerequisite. But in both cases, these directors are wrong.
As with Rob Zombie’s The Devil’s Rejects, Wong Kar-wai’s 2046 needs its prequel, In the Mood of Love, to make it an accessible film and help leave no question marks at the end. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the only time you’ll likely find a critic comparing Zombie’s flat horror flick with Wong’s near masterpiece.
Expectedly, 2046 begins in the metaphorical year of 2046 - the year China’s promise of freedom for Hong Kong ends – a time when people are able to literally wallow in their memories of the past. As it turns out, no one has ever left the bittersweet confines of 2046, except one person. Enter Chow, the protagonist from In the Mood for Love, who is searching for shelter throughout Hong Kong. The year is 1966 and Chow has forsaken journalism (his occupation in Mood) to become a novelist. Upon entering the decrepit Oriental Hotel, Chow is enraptured by the room emblazoned with the number 2046.
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Sony Pictures Classics
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Leung as a far Eastern Barton Fink
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He immediately demands the seemingly vacant room, but needing time to clean up 2046 and its murdered former occupant, the landlord persuades Chow to occupy room 2047. Nonetheless, Chow remains faithfully watchful of 2046 and its occupants, who are all invariably women of a seductive variety.
Most of the film documents Chow’s hopeless relationships with a hooker named Bai Ling (Ziyi Zhang) and the landlord’s daughter (Faye Wong). Presumably unable to live and love normally after the irrevocable emotional damage caused by his tacit affair with Li-zhen (Maggie Chueng [from Mood]), Chow inflicts a significant amount of emotional abuse on Bai Ling, i.e. after making love, Chow shoves money at her, refusing to believe their lovemaking is anything more than a purchase.
With the landlord’s already-heartbroken daughter, Chow inflicts his
vengeful suffering on himself. Unable to tell her how he feels, Chow and the girl’s relationship is relegated to a platonic status, where Chow dictates his novel to her. When the Japanese heartbreaker, whom her father disapproves of, returns and the landlord acquiesces, two are married, and Chow is left where he began: alone.
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Jean-Baptiste Lacroix/Wireimage.com
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Kar-wai in Cannes
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Two words sum up 2046: visually tantalizing. Wong’s vision combined, with longtime collaborator Christopher Doyle’s cinematography, is sensually lush and visually consuming. The camera achieves striking beauty in capturing its characters and their actions. Each smile, each tear, each lit cigarette achieves a sort of luminescent stature unmatched by even Wong’s previous films.
This type of photographic excellence breathes a paralyzing vivacity into the film and consequently into its characters and stories. Lips shudder after a long, passionate kiss. Eyes tremble. The way the camera closely frames these actions helps increase our emotional investment, and no one is better at accomplishing this than Wong and Doyle.
Yet there are many scenes and sequences, which were not shot by Doyle but rather by either Kwan Pun-leung or Lai Yiu-fai. These segments are wildly inconsistent, ranging from nearly matching the stunning Doyle-like quality to appearing shamefully faux-Doyle.
The soundtrack manages to accomplish the Herculean task of
complimenting Wong’s vision. The repetition of Nat King Cole’s “The Christmas Song,” like The Mamas and The Papas’ “California Dreamin” in Wong’s “Chungking Express,” is used to confess a longing for another place, another state of being. These stinging symphonic scores leave an indelible sound of melancholic beauty in the audience’s mind.
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Sony Pictures Classics
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Co-star Gong Li
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While the film’s formal qualities surpass virtually all of Wong’s
previous films, the narrative remains a notch or two below several of them and greatly pales in comparison to the storytelling of In the Mood for Love. Towards the end, the narrative loses control and becomes utterly inscrutable. For example, there is an entire segment where Chow visits Singapore that is so perplexing it becomes completely extraneous and should be forgotten entirely.
Much of this can be contributed to the rushed editing. Reportedly, in 2004, Wong was still editing in the laboratory just hours before the
film was to be shown at the Cannes Film Festival, which resulted in a
delayed screening. After the turbulent Cannes experience, Wong withdrew the film from circulation and apparently spent his time re-editing it until October.
The narrative and editing faults were publicly exasperated when Doyle called the film ‘unnecessary’ and speculated that the reason the
production and post-production took so long (close to four years) was because the director realized the same thing.
Notwithstanding, 2046 demands multiple viewings, regardless of how vigilant the viewer is; because like most of the Shanghai-born
director’s films, 2046 is a gripping film and feels new each time you return to it.
Much of this is attributed to the veritable three-dimensional performances of Tony Leung and Ziyi Zhang, who thankfully receive
the most screen time. Leung plays the troubled, but stoic antihero Chow
with an enthralling sense of reality while Zhang, who received an award for her performance at this year’s Hong Kong Film Festival, plays Bai Ling with both a fiery air of seduction and a sorrowful aura of
helplessness.
At the end of In the Mood for Love, Chow acts out the ancient ritual of telling a secret to a hole in a tree and covering it up with mud. 2046 is unmistakably what happens after the mud is covered, after the secret is hidden inside the tree.
On a sad and final note, 2046 is reportedly the last time Doyle will DP for a Wong Kar-wai film. After four years filled with arduous re-shoots, re-edits and revisions, it seems Doyle now wishes to part ways with the often meticulously slow-moving Wong. One can only hope that Wong’s future films can retain similar production value to his past ones, and that his announced upcoming film, The Lady from Shanghai, arrives smoother and sooner than 2046.
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